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Some Tips for Collectors

Some Tips for Collectors

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Once you enter the fine art collecting business, there are a couple of rules that you or the people that take care of your art must have into consideration

Take into account the temperature and humidity of your home.

It's important to keep the climate of your home stable with the temperature about 70 degrees. Humidity should be about 50%. High humidity can cause works on paper to be destroyed by mildew. Once I lived in Papua New Guinea for fifteen months as a short term assistant with the Summer Institute of Linguistics - Wycliffe Bible Translators. It was so humid there that orchids grew right out of wooden fences. Cameras could not be stored with their lens caps on or mold would grow right on the lens.

Consider using safe wall hang-ups when displaying your collection. Paintings should hang farther out from the wall on the top and be closer at the bottom. Use sticky pads for paintings on the backs of your art on the bottom to push them out a little from the wall. The painting needs room so that air can circulate behind it. Be sure your wires and hanging hardware are in good condition so that the painting won't come crashing to the floor when you least expect it.

Protect your investment on moving day.

When carrying your treasured pieces - don't grab them by the frames - but provide support from opposite sides. Protect works that aren't under glass with pieces of cardboard and blankets or box them. Put your glass-covered artwork in protective boxes and keep them as cool as possible. Don't let the sun beat down on your paintings. If works framed under glass get very cold, when the sun shines on them they'll probably sweat. Condensation will occur under the glass right next to the painting. If this happens, don't panic, the condensation will disappear after awhile. This happened to my work more than once when I showed framed watercolor pieces in outdoor shows.

Read this if you frame your watercolor painting yourself.

If you purchase a watercolor painting and decide to save money by framing it yourself, here's a warning. Don't let your painting touch the glass. Your artwork will mold in time. Make sure there are protective mats keeping the painting from touching the glass. And don't buy the cheapest possible mats. If they aren't acid-free, they will turn the edges of the art work yellow after several years or less. Also, be sure to use acid-free tape when you tape your painting down on a backing board or it will turn your artwork brown.

Are you running out of room to hang art?

If you love original artwork, but feel that you have no room for any more pieces, why not think about your home as a gallery with rotating exhibits. Find a safe place to store the pieces you aren't displaying at the moment and then bring them out later. You might like to consider doing this with seasonal subjects. For example, you could hang a spring painting in spring - or a fall subject in autumn. And later on, hang a winter scene in winter. Sometimes we can get into a rut and our interiors can always look the same with no change. By having a rotating gallery of our very own, we can bring wonderful new looks into our homes whenever we wish.

Protect your walls this way.

Be sure to attach wall protectors to the backs of all the artwork you hang on your walls. They are small round disks that stick to the bottom corners of your piece.

If you forget to do this, in time the painting will permanently darken the wall behind it and ruin your paint job.

Photography

Controlling temperature and relative humidity plays an important part in preserving your photographs. The ideal temperature for photographs is below 70° F; humidity should be kept between 30% and 50%. High humidity can lead to fading, discoloration, and silvering, as well as mold growth and insect infestations. Extremely low humidity can lead to photographs becoming brittle or the emulsion flaking off. The worst conditions for storing your photographs would be an area with wild fluctuations of temperature and humidity, which can cause the paper or board that the photograph is mounted on to deteriorate. Although few individuals have the kind of climate controlled situation that the NHA Research Library can offer, photographs can at least be moved from attics and basements into an interior room of the house.

Another way of preserving your photographs is to control light levels. It's best not to display your valuable photographs, but rather to have a copy made to display and keep the original stored safely. Ultraviolet light damages photographs, causing fading and yellowing and can make them brittle. This damage is cumulative and irreversible, so it is important to protect your images from light.

Much of the damage that photographs sustain comes from handling them. Natural oils can cause chemical damage to an image; tears and abrasions usually happen while handling photographic collections. When handling photographs, be careful not to touch the emulsion. In the NHA Research Library, we wear white cotton gloves when handling photographs.

Finally, create a good photographic storage system that will provide support for your photograph and protect it from the environment. First, separate photographs from other materials that might damage them, such as newspaper clippings (these are highly acidic and will damage and stain surrounding items), rubber bands, tape, and paper clips. Then store each item in an archival-quality storage sleeve. Don't use glassine envelopes, because glassine is hydroscopic, that is it absorbs water from the surrounding atmosphere. Opaque storage supplies, which block light, are good because you can write on the envelope. However, taking them in and out of the envelopes can be abrasive. Avoid scrapbooks with adhesive or magnetic pages; the plastic is usually not archival quality, and that sticky stuff never comes off. A wide range of good quality storage supplies is available in many office supply stores or from online sources of archival supplies (a search on the term "archival supplies" brings up many sources).

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